Why Mercy Watson Books Are Great First Chapter Books

Does your child want to read chapter books, but all of the books you have found, like Magic Tree House or Andrew Lost, seem just a bit too hard? You may want to give the Mercy Watson books a try. They make great first chapter books.

My youngest, Little Fish, just started reading the Mercy Watson books by Kate DiCamillo. He really could have used more practice with easier leveled readers, but he seemed bored by them and loves to have me read chapter books to him. Thankfully, I noticed the Mercy Watson books at the library and remembered they were the first chapter books that Big Fish read. We got out the first one in the series and he loved it.

He pushed himself through each chapter and wanted to read 3-4 chapters each time he sat down. He is now on the third book in the series, Mercy Watson Fights Crime, and will bring it to me frequently and ask me to sit with him so he can read it. And his big brother has been excited to see them come in the house and has been re-reading them, too. Now in under 10 minutes a book! So why do we all love Mercy Watson? Read on…..

Pictures

Little Fish loves that there are pictures, mostly in full color, on almost every set of pages. He has struggled with a visual processing disorder since birth and he doesn’t always form an accurate picture in his mind based upon information he reads or hears. Therefore, he studies the pictures carefully in the book to help him understand the story. This often helps him “guess” the right word when he has to sound out a word he does not recognize immediately. Pictures contain great context clues for children who are still learning how to read new words.

Large Type

The Mercy Watson books contain large type with lots of white space between the lines. This is great for children transitioning from early readers to chapter books and has helped Little Fish immensely with his visual difficulties. On a page with no pictures, there are only 13 lines of text and typically no more than 7 words in a line. This makes reading each page fairly quick. Occasionally words are italicized or written in big, fun bubble letters for emphasis. There are enough of these instances to teach the purpose of the change in font without being so much that it slows down decoding.

Reading Level

For those that are familiar with specific reading levels, Mercy Watson is a level K in the Fountas & Pinnell system, which correlates to level L in Reading A-Z Levels, a 501-550 Lexile and ages 7-8. They contain many sight words and words that can be easily sounded out. They also contain some repetition of phrases to decrease the amount of decoding needed. However, they are not overly simplified and contain some challenging names such as “Eugenia” and “Officer Tomilello”. They also contain some higher level vocabulary words such as “porcine”, “reforming”, “contentedly”, “folly”, and “menace”.

Content

So we have talked about all the technical aspects, but what about the story itself? The books are about 70 pages each and the main characters are Mr. and Mrs. Watson, their pet pig Mercy, who is treated as a person, and their neighbors, sisters Baby and Eugenia Lincoln. Eugenia is portrayed as grumpy, which Little Fish finds to be funny. Police officers, fireman, and even a robber make up some of the supporting characters. The stories are set in a small town and contain a short sequence of events that includes a problem and a resolution. The sequence is easy to follow and very little inference is needed to understand the plot. And spoiler alert: most, if not all, the books end with hot, buttered toast!

Since these are books that are read in Little Fish’s free time, I do not really push him to tell the story back or answer comprehension questions about the story, but you could easily incorporate that. Hope you enjoy the Mercy books as much as we do!

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I would guesstimate a total of about 3600 total (not 3600 different words). I based this on about 13 lines a page with about 7 words per line and the fact that probably only half the pages had text out of the 80 pages. So definitely a guess, but might give you a good idea!

We have read the entire series many times, and my daughter would love something similar. I have had a hard time locating other beginner chapter books with color pictures. Do you have any suggestions? Thank you!

Hi Heather! We never found any we liked as much as Mercy Watson, but there have been some others. Check out the Cam Jansen series and some of the other higher Leveled Readers, such as levels 3 and 4 for some chapter like books with pictures. I know there was one with cows, but I can not remember the name! 🙂 Scooby-Doo Beginner Mysteries also have colored pictures, but not on each page as Mercy Watson does.

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